On remembering where I am

Thoughts on edits and new ideas, from 2022

The Novel I Will Be Telling You About Soon (Thank You For Your Patience) has gone off to copy edit. This is the part of the process when a copy editor - who hasn't seen the novel before - crawls through every word and line and checks everything.

Do the dates make sense? (A copy editor saved one of my characters from a 15 month pregnancy.) When you say 'cosmopolitan' do you mean the cocktail or the magazine? You've referenced this twice before - cut one of them?

Basically, the copy editor saves me from myself, and when their suggestions come back to me I'm probably going to agree with everything they suggest. (Not always. In 'Lost For Words' I wanted wood to 'cackle' as it was burning: there had been a reference to witches a couple of paragraphs before. No copy editor worth their salt would let that pass without checking that I didn't mean 'crackle'.)

Before the copy edit is the line edit, when the editor I have worked with on the novel does a line-by-line analysis and checks absolutely everything is as good and as clear as possible.

I really love these processes. I love being in the weeds of my own writing and making sure every word works.

And while the novel is away, being line-edited and copy-edited and proofread, I'm working on something new.

Here's the part where I have to watch myself.

Because the last thing a new idea needs is word-by-word analysis, or pulling every tiny warp and weft of plot into place.

A new idea needs space and time. It needs expansiveness and possibility. It needs 'She could be a gymnast. Or an MP. Or what if we never find out what her job is, because she lives in her head and doesn't ever articulate that to herself?' It needs 'Oooh, first person has possibilities here, but it will really depend on what the turning points of the plot turn out to be, so I can't decide on this yet, and I'll play with third-person writing for now.'

Essentially, what I need to do is hold space for myself so the soft, dangerously pliable idea can find its own form in its own time.

I don't really think of this as being a mystical process, just a thing that can't be too structured or too rushed. If I decide on what a novel is going to be too quickly, there's a good chance I'll end up with something obvious, or something I've already written (it has happened...).

The thing is, I don't like not knowing what I'm writing. Though there is all the fun of post-its and idea generation and the fact that this novel could be ANYTHING ANYTHING (copy editor query: repetition of ANYTHING deliberate?) - I do not love uncertainty. I can cope with a bit of it - a novelist's career is shaped by it - but my impulse is to nail a new idea down as soon as I can so I feel a bit less squirmy.

So at this stage, I'm doing all I can to make the new-novel process feel uncommitted. Nothing is typed up. Everything is in notebooks and on post-its and saved as voice notes from when I had an idea while I was walking Harris the greyhound. I'm not talking about this to anyone, because as soon as I say 'it's about' then I will pay attention to what comes out of my own mouth and commit before I'm ready.

And I remind myself that being uncomfortable at this stage is a lot better than throwing away 50,000 words six months down the line when I realise the original idea isn't strong enough.

When the copy-edits come in, I will fall on them with utter glee and spend a happy day wondering about things like whether saying 'canapes' or 'nibbles' is more in character for that person, and if readers now in their 20s will know what a cap is is a contraceptive context.

It will be a lovely holiday from uncertainty.